Bringing It All Back Home (play)

Bringing It All Back Home is a one-act play by Terrence McNally. It is a biting satire of a middle-class family and their reaction to losing a son in Vietnam.[2][3]

Bringing It All Back Home
Written byTerrence McNally
CharactersSam - father
Mona - mother
Jimmy - son killed in war
Johnny - younger son
Suzy - daughter
Ms. Fatima - TV reporter
television support crew
casket delivery people[1]
Date premiered1969
Place premieredNew Haven
Subjectantiwar
GenreDrama
SettingUnited States, Viet Nam war era

Productions

The play was produced in New Haven in 1969[4] and at the Provincetown Playhouse, New York City, 1971.[5]

It was produced by Solid Hang at the Collective Unconscious, New York, in September 2005.[6]

Concept

This play is one of several of McNally's that dealt with the Vietnam and Iraq wars: Botticelli (1968), Witness (1968), and Some Men (2007). Peter Wolfe (professor of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis) notes that Bringing It All Back Home is an anti-war play, and also examines the family.[7]

Plot

The father of the household makes obscene phone calls while his teen son and daughter fight about the illegal drugs at their high school; the mother blots it all out. Then the body of their son Jimmy, killed in the Vietnam war, arrives. A television station wants to film their reactions. Jimmy arises and wonders why he died.

References
  1. "Dramatists Play Service, Inc, Terrence McNally", Book/Item: ¡CUBA SI!, BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME, LAST GASPS, ISBN 978-0-8222-0257-8, pp. 27 (Jimmy), 28 (Johnny, Suzy), 31 (Mona), 34 (Sam), 35 (Ms. Horne)
  2. Dramatists Play Service, Inc, Terrence McNally
  3. playdatabase.com: Bringing It All Back Home
  4. Zinman, Toby Silverman."Selected Bibliography" Terrence McNally: A Casebook Routledge, April 8, 2014, ISBN 1135596050, p. 181
  5. "Biography, Famous Works" filmreference.com, accessed April 29, 2014
  6. "'Bringing It All Back Home' at the Collective Unconscious" newyorktheatreguide.com, August 29, 2005, accessed March 2, 2016
  7. Wolfe, Peter. "Chapter Three", The Theater of Terrence McNally: A Critical Study, McFarland, 2013, ISBN 1476612587, p.55

Further reading
  • Terrence McNally : 15 short plays, Terrence McNally, Smith and Kraus, Lyme, NH, c1994, ISBN 1-880399-34-2


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